“On Friday, Microsoft filed a lawsuit against Samsung, accusing the company of going back on the patent licensing deal the two signed three years ago,” Nick Wingfield reports for The New York Times.

“In the lawsuit, Microsoft said that Samsung stopped making royalty payments to Microsoft last fall, as required by their 2011 agreement, which related to Samsung’s use of Microsoft’s intellectual property in its Android smartphones and tablets,” Wingfield reports. “Samsung stopped making the payments, according to Microsoft, because it felt that Microsoft’s acquisition of Nokia‘s mobile business amounted to a breach of contract.”

” In a blog post, David Howard, Microsoft’s deputy general counsel and corporate vice president, suggested that the real reason Samsung decided to stop paying was that its smartphones sales have quadrupled since the two companies signed their agreement,” Wingfield reports. “The heavily redacted lawsuit does not say how much money Microsoft believes it is owed by Samsung. Analysts have estimated that Microsoft receives billions of dollars a year in payments through licensing agreements with Android-device makers.”

Steve pulled a fast one on Microsoft to be more accurate, buying time and manipulating the situation to his advantage while MS thought it was doing the same to save itself from anti competition and monopolist accusations. Steve used its power against it as he did time and again and the result is the final defeat of Microsoft as a serious competitor. Not sure Samsung can claim the same thing in this.

That’s a very good point. Samsung would rather settle than be shamed by what they’ve been hiding. You *know* the sales of the premium models have to have been well below the iPhone or else they’d have been crowing about it.